Letter: Trump and his followers desperate to distract from his COVID-19 failures

Wednesday

May 13, 2020 at 5:40 PM

May 10 -- To the Editor:

Richard Parian, in his May 6 letter “Trump-a-phobes blame president for everything,” appears to be making use of a Trump playbook strategy of distract and attack. Here, critics of Trump’s behavior are unfair Trump haters who will not give him credit for anything. We must be motivated by such banal concerns as disliking his personality. In actuality it is the pervasive and perpetually corrupt behavior by Trump and his cronies that has motivated the uniting of different factions of the country concerned about the survival of the American constitutional system, the rule of law, and the integrity of our democratic Republic.

Trump and his followers like to frame choices in terms of false binaries such as “Trump can’t be at fault if China is to blame.” Yes, it is given knowledge that President Xi JinPing silenced the doctors from Wuhan who were trying to alert the world to the deadly coronavirus. That is what dictators do. Perhaps Trump and his supporters need to deflect from Trump’s horrendous mismanagement of the U.S. coronavirus response by scapegoating China perhaps only because the usual scapegoats, Hillary Clinton or President Obama, do not apply.

This is the glaring fact: instead of listening to national security advisors warning that urgent mitigation was necessary, Trump was and is dismissive about COVID-19, just as in a treasonous manner, he was and is dismissive about Russia’s role in interfering with U.S. elections. Because national steps to supply the nation with necessary testing and PPE were and continue to be lacking, the U.S. now has 5 times the rate of COVID-19 infection and death than any other country

The U.S. is perilously close to becoming a banana republic in which the rule of law is flouted when Trump crony Attorney General Barr drops charges against co-crony Michael Flynn who lied to the FBI, committed perjury and even pled guilty. Trump’s offenses are too long to catalog here. His brazen disregard for the emoluments clause and attempts to profit from office harken back to the corruption of Warren Harding and the Teapot Dome scandal. His brazen incessant lies have surpassed those of Richard Nixon. The reason, Mr. Parian, as to why “Trump-a-phobes” who consist of patriotic “Lincoln Project” conservatives, independents, and progressives are so opposed to Trump is because he is a criminal con artist who has defiled our constitutional government and frankly any norms of human decency. And yeah, I guess we don’t care much for his personality.

Phil Harford

Newmarket

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